Scuderia Ferrari HP: We Were Here to WinIt is a bit disheartening when you have followed something for so long and watch it dwindle.I started my first job in 2016, where, oddly enough, I met another person I would come to consider a friend. Saturdays, at a certain point in the month, were reserved for inventory. And although I did not know it then, something else was becoming just as important to me: Formula 1.There was always one name we discussed: Hamilton. But there was another, always there and always criticised, nonetheless: Scuderia Ferrari HP.Today, those names together seem to overshadow them all.I was always curious about the excitement my coworker showed. It was, in a word, different. You could see her excitement for race day. Hamilton could eclipse her smiles for a date, a hangout with friends, and even events she had been looking forward to. And then there was Ferrari.Everyone wants one.Regardless of where you end up in life, a Ferrari remains on that list. Whether it is to appreciate the engineering, rage about their strict buyer policies, or simply be seen in that unmistakable Rosso Corsa red, they were, and still are, the Lady in Red.Today, however, race day brings another expression.Instead of the excitement that followed Hamilton and Verstappen taking themselves out in P1 and P2, an incident that carried its consequences into the following race weekend, there is something devastating. And that feeling seems to reign across the grid.For me, hybridisation adds to the races. I get to see the people who have made those years exciting sitting out front, taking meetings and highlighting the work. For others, the change is less welcome: confusing, political and heavily criticised.But I digress.Scuderia Ferrari.And that is how it has been for them. We start at Ferrari, get distracted, and somehow find ourselves returning to Scuderia Ferrari HP. Still there, but still in the same place.Today, however, that place feels brighter than ever.If the decisions being made now are the continuation of Scuderia Ferrari HP’s history, then I fully understand why 2009 might have been the last year of genuine excitement for some. It has been a long time. More than a decade of watching a team you love without always feeling that you are truly seeing it.And that is the difficult part: to see someone, year after year, and not really see them.The calls and errors in Singapore belong to the team collectively. From senior management to the pit-stop crew, and yes, the drivers too, regardless of whether we sometimes treat them as the final pieces added to an already complicated machine.You see, Enzo became distinctive in his thinking after losing a friend. Drivers could be replaced. It was a choice not necessarily born of malice or a desire for control, but of pain, heartbreak and suffering.He loved the man.That history matters because Ferrari has always been more than a car manufacturer entering a race. It is a team built on ambition, loss, loyalty and the relentless pursuit of victory. Its greatest periods were not created by one person alone, and its greatest failures cannot be attributed to one person either.Scuderia Ferrari HP should have worked out the best possible arrangement for a man who carries the title of seven-time world champion. The race engineer, the communication, the strategy and the relationship between driver and team should have been aligned with the demands of that responsibility.Ferrari should, at the very least, have established a clear race condition: let the faster man through.And Scuderia Ferrari HP needs to make its decisions as a racing team, not as another corporate entity. That is simply not who you are supposed to be.If today’s results are the consequence of decisions made over the last twenty-odd years, then I understand why Leclerc can be as fast as Hamilton, and in some places faster, yet never seem to have the opportunity to prove the full extent of it.Michael was great for all his talents, but so were the people who could translate his words into viable track time, viable strategies and, ultimately, victories. A champion needs more than speed. He needs a team that understands what to do with it.Mercedes understood that at its peak. And although this is speculative, I can say with confidence that without the team, the leadership and the decisions made behind the scenes, the results would not have been the same.Placing Leclerc ahead of Hamilton without a clear strategic basis does not necessarily close the gap. It risks creating a larger one, whether between the drivers, within the garage or between the team and those who have spent years believing in it.I would say Ferrari needs a change, but change is not always a good thing.We are not here simply to build something new or set records. You have plenty of those already. We are here to win.And winning, in itself, creates history.Everyone else eventually becomes a footnote in somebody else’s story.There is a reason we remember 2009.WE WON.
